Let’s talk about… orgies, says director Rod Singh

“Even within the gay community, there is this certain stigma on those who engage in orgies, or those who are highly sexual,” said director Rod Singh of Cinema One Originals 2018 movie “Mamu; And a Mother Too”. This is why he wants to “reclaim that narrative.”

“Even within the gay community, there is this certain stigma on those who engage in orgies, or those who are highly sexual,” said director Rod Singh of Cinema One Originals 2018 movie “Mamu; And a Mother Too”. “Maybe because it doesn’t have a story. Like when people talk about orgies, all they know is just a group of people having sex.”

This
is why, Singh said, he wants to “reclaim that narrative – that there is a story
happening in orgies – that just like any other romantic relationships, there is
a story happening in (people engaged in) sexual activities. I want to challenge
the mindset of those who are sex-negative and communicate a very simple
message: Sex is a language.”

Ad
this is what Singh intended to do via gay dating app Blued’s new series, OrG!
(Come & Play). Blued funded “Mamu; And a Mother Too”; and in return, Singh
pledged to produce a series for Blued, thus OrG!

OrG!’s story revolves around a group of gay men engaging in an orgy, as they select their invitees, negotiating their desires and preferences. One of the members of the orgy, a medicine graduate named Ram, is secretly dating Niko, a filmmaker in his mid-20s. His orgy group finds Niko attractive and decides to invite Niko to join the group. As Niko slowly becomes more entwined in the setup, his romance with Ram begins to crumble, leading Ram to resolve that the only way to win Niko back is to tear apart his friendship with his sexual partners.

“Aminin na natin (Let’s admit), while we
aspire to be an empowered community, marami
pa din talaga yung (many of us remain) backwards. When I say backwards, yung mga (those who are) sex negative. Isa na siguro sa mga issues na ito ang (One
of the issues here is) orgy. I’ve read and heard a lot of gay people saying
something negative about orgies. And with this series, I want people to re-evaluate
their views,” Singh said.

Singh
added that perhaps many people look negatively at orgies because “in most cases,
alam lang natin na (we just know
that) it’s a group of highly sexual individuals having sex kaya ganoon na lang siya ka-stigmatized (which is why it’s
extremely stigmatized). Tapos marami din
na ina-associate yung (There are also many who associate) orgy with drugs
and promiscuity. Sa series na ito,
babaliin ko yun (I’ll break those). That orgy can just be a group of
friends, with different character sketches, no drugs, it’s safe, and there’s a
story.”

For OrG!, there are eight episodes with a running time of five to seven minutes per episode, with the short time considered as “somewhat of a limitation”. But Singh said “I just hope that (the audience) will dig deeper. I am hopeful that at the very least… they will have a new view on orgies kasi may story na siya (because it already has a story).”

In
the end, Singh wants people – particularly members of the LGBTQIA community –
to recognize that “sex between two people is okay. Sex between three people is
okay. Sex between five people is hot,” he laughed.

L.A. Pride’s ‘march’ for #BlackLivesMatter is allegedly collaborating with police

The scheduled “march” in solidarity for #BlackLivesMatter organized in lieu of the L.A. Pride parade/festival/party is now getting slammed as a “collaboration” with the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), considered tone deaf considering that the uprising happening in the US right now is a protest against police brutality.

All PR; tone deaf; or ongoing learning process?

The scheduled “march” in solidarity for #BlackLivesMatter organized in lieu of the L.A. Pride parade/festival/party is now getting slammed as a “collaboration” with the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), considered tone deaf considering that the uprising happening in the US right now is a protest against police brutality.

As earlier reported, an uprising has been happening in the US now, in protest of America’s long history of systemic racial injustice. This was again highlighted by the May 25 death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man who – after being suspected of passing a fake $20 bill – died in Minneapolis, Minnesota after a white police officer, Derek Chauvin, kneeled on his neck for over eight minutes. Three other officers were involved; and none of them revived Floyd even when he was already motionless and had no pulse. Floyd was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.

Christopher Street West (CSW), organizer of the annual LA Pride Parade and Festival, initially canceled all in-person events due to Covid-19. But on June 1, its board of directors voted to “peacefully assemble a protest in solidarity with the Black community.”

And now a letter from CSW to LAPD has been released online, with the former saying they look forward to organizing a #BlackLivesMatter gathering “collaboratively” with the LAPD.

I’ve been informed @LAPride is, in fact, working with police for their so-called “Black solidarity” march. Attached is a screenshot of an event producer’s letter to the LAPD underscoring “a strong and unified partnership with law enforcement.” Homos, this is not it. pic.twitter.com/7YkndfDUrV— Fran Tirado (@fransquishco) June 5, 2020

When called out, CSW said it will release “more information”; but none has been released so far.

A comprehensive review of existing evidence supports physical distancing of two meters or more to prevent person-to-person transmission of COVID-19. Face masks and eye protection decrease the risk of infection, too.

Image created by Alana Naylor. Submitted for United Nations Global Call Out To Creatives - help stop the spread of COVID-19.

A comprehensive review of existing evidence supports physical distancing of two meters or more to prevent person-to-person transmission of COVID-19, says an international team led by McMaster University and St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton.

Face masks and eye protection decrease the risk of infection, too.

The systematic review and meta-analysis was commissioned by the World Health Organization. The findings were published in The Lancet.

“Physical distancing likely results in a large reduction of COVID-19,” said lead author Holger Schünemann, professor of the departments of health research methods, evidence, and impact, and medicine at McMaster.

Schünemann is co-director of the World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre for Infectious Diseases, Research Methods and Recommendations. He also is director of Cochrane Canada and McMaster GRADE Centre.

“Although the direct evidence is limited, the use of masks in the community provides protection, and possibly N95 or similar respirators worn by health-care workers suggest greater protection than other face masks,” Schünemann said. “Availability and feasibility and other contextual factors will probably influence recommendations that organizations develop about their use. Eye protection may provide additional benefits.”

The systematic review was conducted by a large, international collaborative of researchers, front-line and specialist clinicians, epidemiologists, patients, public health and health policy experts of published and unpublished literature in any language.

They sought direct evidence on COVID-19 and indirect evidence on related coronaviruses causative of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS). The team used Cochrane methods and the Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, and Evaluation (GRADE) approach which is used world-wide to assess the certainty of evidence.

They identified no randomized control trials addressing the three coronaviruses but 44 relevant comparative studies in health-care and non-health-care (community) settings across 16 countries and six continents from inception to early May 2020.

The authors noted more global, collaborative, well-conducted studies of different personal protective strategies are needed. For masks, large randomized trials are underway and are urgently needed.

The scientific lead is Derek Chu, a clinician scientist in the departments of health research methods, evidence, and impact, and medicine at McMaster and an affiliate of the Research Institute of St. Joe’s Hamilton.

“There is an urgent need for all caregivers in health-care settings and non-health-care settings to have equitable access to these simple personal protective measures, which means scaling up production and consideration about repurposing manufacturing,” said Chu.

“However, although distancing, face masks, and eye protection were each highly protective, none made individuals totally impervious from infection and so, basic measures such as hand hygiene are also essential to curtail the current COVID-19 pandemic and future waves.”

The work was funded by the World Health Organization and involved close collaboration with the American University of Beirut, Lebanon and many international partners.

Adoption agencies should be able to reject gay couples in the US, Trump’s administration argues

The Justice Department of the administration of US President Donald Trump filed a Supreme Court brief that backs a Catholic group that refuses to work with same-sex prospective parents. The gist of their argument: faith-based organizations should be allowed to discriminate according to their faith.

LGBTQIA hate from the US of A.

On June 3, the Justice Department of the administration of US President Donald Trump filed a Supreme Court brief that backs a taxpayer-funded Catholic group that refuses to work with same-sex prospective parents.

This brief was filed in the case Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, which revolves around the refusal of Catholic Social Services (CSS), a religious nonprofit that operates a child welfare agency, to place adoptive and foster children with same-sex couples even if this violates the city’s nondiscrimination ordinance.

In 2018, CSS sued Philadelphia after the city ended its contract with the faith-based service provider when it learned that the organization refuses to consider same-sex couples as potential parents for foster children. CSS used the “it’s against our religion” card as defense, claiming that providing services to same-sex couples violated its constitutional rights to free religious exercise and free speech, including – in this case – to discriminate.

CSS initially lost the case in lower courts, which led to the appeal reaching the US Supreme Court.

By backing discrimination, Trump’s administration argues that organizations should be able to refuse to work with same-sex couples and others whom the group considers to be in violation of its religious beliefs.

For this administration, “Philadelphia has impermissibly discriminated against religious exercise,” and that the city’s actions “reflect unconstitutional hostility toward CSS’s religious beliefs.”

The right to discriminate is actually a common demand of religious denominations/organizations even when they are supposedly pushing for equality.

In the Philippines, for example, the Roman Catholic Church – via the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) – actually released a statement partially supporting the anti-discrimination bill in 2015. However, CBCP’s statement stressed its desire to still be allowed to discriminate, particularly in: 1) determining who should be admitted to priestly or religious formation, who should be ordained and received into Holy Order, or who should be professed as members of religious communities and orders; and 2) for Catholic schools to be allowed to discriminate on who they can admit or retain.

Back to the US, and as a side note: Eleven states actually have laws allowing state-licensed agencies to claim religious exemptions in the foster care and adoption process.

And yet in 2017 alone, it is estimated that about 443,000 children were in foster care across the US, according to a Department of Health and Human Services. Annually, around 50,000 children are adopted through the child welfare system, but about 20,000 others just “age out” before being placed with an adoptive family. Meaning: straight people won’t adopt them, but they won’t allow able LGBTQIA foster parents to adopt them either.

The US Supreme Court will hear Fulton v. City of Philadelphia in its next term, which starts this October.

Researchers at the Yale School of Public Health have found that death records of LGBTQ youth who died by suicide were substantially more likely to mention bullying as a factor than their non-LGBTQ peers. The researchers reviewed nearly 10,000 death records of youth ages 10 to 19 who died by suicide in the United States from 2003 to 2017.

The findings are published in the current issue of JAMA Pediatrics.

While LGBTQ youth are more likely to be bullied and to report suicidal thoughts and behaviors than non-LGBTQ youth, this is believed to be the first study showing that bullying is a more common precursor to suicide among LGBTQ youth than among their peers.

“We expected that bullying might be a more common factor, but we were surprised by the size of the disparity,” said lead author Kirsty Clark, a postdoctoral fellow at Yale School of Public Health. “These findings strongly suggest that additional steps need to be taken to protect LGBTQ youth — and others — against the insidious threat of bullying.”

Death records from LGBTQ youths were about five times more likely to mention bullying than non-LGBTQ youths’ death records, the study found. Among 10- to 13-year-olds, over two-thirds of LGBTQ youths’ death records mentioned that they had been bullied.

Bullying is a major public health problem among youth, and it is especially pronounced among LGBTQ youth, said the researchers. Clark and her co-authors used data from the National Violent Death Reporting System, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)-led database that collects information on violent deaths, including suicides, from death certificates, law enforcement reports, and medical examiner and coroner records.

Death records in the database include narrative summaries from law enforcement reports and medical examiner and coroner records regarding the details of the youth’s suicide as reported by family or friends, the youth’s diary, social media posts, and text or email messages, as well as any suicide note. Clark and her team searched these narratives for words and phrases that suggested whether the individual was LGBTQ. They followed a similar process to identify death records mentioning bullying.

“Bullies attack the core foundation of adolescent well-being,” said John Pachankis, the Susan Dwight Bliss Associate Professor of Public Health at the Yale School of Public Health and study co-author. “By showing that bullying is also associated with life itself for LGBTQ youth, this study urgently calls for interventions that foster safety, belonging and esteem for all young people.”

Other authors on the study include Anthony J. Maiolatesi, doctoral student at Yale School of Public Health, and Susan Cochran, professor at UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.

The benefits of playing online casino games

Online kasyna games, just like physical casino games, can equally make you an instant millionaire, especially when you master the art of becoming a successful gambler. The world has the richest people in Las Vegas who depend on gambling as a source of livelihood and even use the same to access top-of-the-range cars in the world. In other words, casinos are a gold mine if you are willing to become a talented gold hunter.

For instance, you will only increase your chances of winning big and more in any online casino if you build a massive bankroll to play as many games as possible or a single game as many times as possible. Remember, successful gamblers choose what they are best at and stick to that.

So, what are some of the benefits that come with playing online casino games? Well, they include but aren’t limited to the following:

Instant wins

As mentioned, online kasyna games can make you an instant millionaire, especially when you master the art of winning. Simple games like slots don’t even require any special skills to win. All you need to do is to stake and press a button. And the best thing about slots is that you even get to compete for a multimillion jackpot with a simple amount of stake.

Life skills

Some skills that gambling impacts on players are indispensable in real day-to-day life. For instance, playing casino games teaches you the art of patience, a valuable skill that can help you succeed in business and careers. As a player, you also get to become a strategist because, on most occasions, you train yourself to foresee the future.

Free bonus and offer

Playing sloty games with free bonuses and offers can be the best thing especially when you know how to differentiate risks and opportunities. Bonuses and offers are mainly awarded to new customers as welcome prizes or existing customers as loyalty prizes. The best thing about bonuses and offers is that you can use them to wager on the riskiest but most profitable game without feeling the pinch of your hard-earned cash. In most cases, the professional gambler would recommend that you use no deposit bonuses and offers to build a bigger bankroll that will give you a competitive edge over the house.

Variety of games

Lastly, it will also interest you to know that online casinos have more than enough games to accommodate what you may prefer. Slots games alone exist in thousands, and you’ll never play all games even in a lifetime. In other words, there is something that is always tailored to match everyone’s expectations and needs. All you need to do is register in your favorite platform and explore the array of games available to discover where you are best at. The same technique doesn’t only apply to slot games but across the board.

Many people are always so fast to criticize gambling without considering the beneficial part of participating in the games. For instance, interacting with live dealers in a live casino has psychological benefits that shouldn’t be overlooked at all costs.

The physical signs of stress and how to fix them

Stress can sometimes become so intense that it actually manifests into physical symptoms. Now, this doesn’t happen all the time, but it’s important that you notice the signs if it begins to happen to you. In this article, we’re going to be looking at some of the physical signs of stress and how you can fix them.

Some of the symptoms that you might experience if you are suffering from the physical symptoms of stress are as follows: Aches and pains, nausea, dizziness, rapid heart rate, cold or flu, and so on. There are a few more, but these are the most common, so if you know that you have been stressed lately and now you are experiencing these symptoms, then you’ve got to do something about your stress levels sooner rather than later.

These symptoms are just going to make your life more miserable than just the mental stress alone, so it’s important that you take charge and make some changes to your life.

Try To Relax

You need to relax. We know that this is easier said than done, but it’s something you have got to do if you want any chance at fighting the stress and getting rid of the physical symptoms. Now, there are lots of ways that you can do this, and they won’t all work for everyone, but there is sure to be some way that will fit you. You can look at cheap ounces in Canada if this is something that you want to try as it has been known to be a stress reliever. Just make sure you know what you’re doing before you get involved with this. Or, you could sit down with your friends and watch a movie or TV show together.

There are sports that you can play, places that you can go together, books that you can read, family that you can see and so on. There are so many things that you can do to relieve your stress, and you might not even realize that they would be an effective way to relax. Try a few and see what works best for you.

Talk It Through With Someone

It might be the case that to help get rid of your stress, you need to talk it through with someone. If you have noticed that your skin has become irritated, this is also an indication of stress, but once you’ve opened up and shared some of your troubles, you might notice that this starts to ease. You might not even be looking for help or advice, just someone to listen and tell you that they understand what you feel.

Sometimes it’s getting it out in the open that makes things better, not having a solution to fix whatever the problem is straight away.

We hope that you have found this article helpful, and now understand some of the physical signs of stress and how you can fix them. Good luck.